Си Бокс - Dark Sky

As Evelyn exited her office, Marybeth called out to her.

The older woman turned.

“I’m sorry if I seemed snappish to you this morning. I apologize for my tone. I just worry that some derelict will wander in here during the night and wreck the place.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Evelyn said with a blush. But she was obviously relieved. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. I really thought I’d checked the doors.”

That doesn’t matter , Marybeth wanted to say while throttling Evelyn. We all have a lot on our minds. And it doesn’t matter what you thought you did. Just take responsibility and apologize and don’t mess up again. Why is it that adults—and you’re older than me, Evelyn—can’t admit an error without offering up an excuse?

But she didn’t say any of it. She knew Evelyn was a long-time library employee who was very quick to complain to HR about any perceived slight. Marybeth knew she couldn’t afford a complaint like that on the record prior to her budget presentation before the commissioners.

So instead, she asked, “Where is my daughter?”

“I think she was on her way to the computer room.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Marybeth.”

—

She found her oldest daughter perched in front of one of the public monitors in the rear of the old Carnegie library. There was a bank of them separated by partitions and they were largely used by older patrons or unemployed drifters. There was one of each on either side of Sheridan—a disheveled man in a camo parka with a gray ZZ Top–length beard, and a matronly retired postal worker with steel-framed glasses and a permanent scowl—so Sheridan stood out.

“Hey, Mom,” Sheridan said. She looked lean, tan, and outdoorsy, Marybeth thought.

“What brings you here?”

“There are a couple of articles I’d like to print out and give to Nate. Is it okay to use your printer?”

Like most kids of Sheridan’s age, she didn’t have a printer at home.

“Sure, I’ll authorize it,” Marybeth said. The library charged five cents a page.

Marybeth looked over Sheridan’s shoulder to see the results of a Google search for “Falcon Smuggling.”

“That’s interesting,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m trying to do some research to share with him.”

Sheridan lowered her voice as Marybeth bent closer to hear. “I’m trying to prevent him from going medieval on whoever has been stealing birds. He takes it personally and I know he’s on legal thin ice as it is. I talked to Liv and she agrees: we need to try and intervene before someone gets hurt.”

Marybeth looked up to see that the retired postal employee, a notorious local gossip, was peering at them over the partition.

“Let me buy you a cup of coffee across the street,” Marybeth said to Sheridan. “You can print out the articles afterward.”

—

I talked with the new county prosecutor,” Marybeth said to Sheridan over a mug at the Burg-O-Pardner. “I think she’s inclined to let things go. That’s just my impression from having met with her. But if Nate draws too much attention to himself or commits another violation, all bets are off.”

“That’s what I’m trying to prevent,” Sheridan said as she winced from her first bitter sip. “I’m trying to learn as much about falcon smuggling and smugglers as I can because stealing eggs and birds and selling them overseas is totally illegal. Maybe I can help locate the guy and we can deal with him legitimately. Did you know that some falcon eggs go for up to twenty thousand dollars in the Middle East? Or that a fledgling peregrine falcon is worth fifty thousand dollars to a falconer in Qatar? This is big business, but from what I’ve learned there are only a few poachers in the world who can pull it off. I think one of them is in the area.”

“And you’d like to find him before Nate does,” Marybeth said.

“Yes, but I’d rather Dad found him. I’d rather the guy be arrested than be pulled limb from limb and left for dead. That’s what Nate would like to do to him.”

“You’re like your father,” Marybeth said. “Trouble has a way of finding you.”

“Speaking of,” Sheridan said, “where is he? I texted him this morning and he didn’t reply. I thought he might know if there’s another falconer around.”

Marybeth paused. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

—

Marybeth told Sheridan about the assignment from the governor, the hunting expedition, about Steve-2 Price.

Sheridan’s eyes got big. “Steve-2 Price? The ConFab guy?”

“Yes.”

“He’s here and Dad is guiding him?”

“Yes.”

“That’s absolutely insane . Does Dad even know who he is?”

“Not really,” Marybeth said.

Sheridan laughed and said, “I mean, us girls had to beg him to even get a cell phone. Do you remember he used to keep his off all the time to, quote, ‘save the battery’?”

“He’s gotten better about that. He even texts, as you know.”

“Yeah, but in complete sentences,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “April and Lucy and I laugh about it all the time. We send each other stuff he writes because it’s so formal.”

Giggling, Sheridan dug her phone out and found the message app. She opened it up and showed the screen to her mother. It read:

Dear Sheridan:

I hope this finds you well. As you know, next week is your mother’s birthday and I wonder if you have any ideas on what she might like as a gift? She’s mentioned a new saddle but . . .

Marybeth smiled. She was flattered that Joe was aware of her birthday, even if he was flummoxed about what to get her. She opened her phone and the ConFab app and handed it to Sheridan.

“This is the most recent post, from last night,” she said.

Sheridan shook her head as she scrolled down through the posts. “I can’t believe I knew nothing about this.”

“It was supposed to be a secret,” Marybeth said. “Apparently Steve-2 and his people think otherwise.”

“Since I started working at Yarak, I feel so out of it,” Sheridan lamented. “I spend a lot of days out of cell phone range and I just don’t keep up on what’s going on anymore. Nate’s like Dad—he doesn’t do social media. I used to live on my phone, like everybody else I know. It seemed so important. It seemed vital to be connected at all times. Do you realize that in my lifetime I’ve never not been online?”

Marybeth sat back. “I’d never thought of it like that.”

“It’s true. I’m not online during the day, and when I get home at night, I’m too tired to check Facebook or Insta for very long. I hardly ever post anything because everyone is so judgmental. It’s hard for my old friends to understand what I do, and too many of them feel the need to comment on it. I never comment on what my friends are doing unless it’s positive and innocuous. I know they aren’t as happy and successful as they pretend to be, but I let it go. But not some of these people I’m talking about. They ask, ‘Why are you wasting your life?’ or ‘Whatever happened to you and Lance Romance? Is he still in the picture?’ None of it is anyone’s business.

“I’m grateful I haven’t gotten married and had any kids,” Sheridan said without realizing her words were a shiv into her mother’s heart, “because if you have a baby, every damn supermom in the world feels entitled to tell you you’re doing everything wrong and harming the child. I’ve seen it. My friends who have kids get beaten up more than anyone. It’s no wonder so many of us don’t have them.”

Sheridan sighed. The topic was obviously very much on her mind. “But it’s maybe not so bad,” she said. “I imagine it’s like quitting drugs cold turkey. It hurts at first, but as time goes by it gets better. You start to feel normal again. But the thing is, Mom, I’m not sure I know what normal is . Social media has always been there, you know? Maybe we take it too seriously.”